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Although I no longer own one I might recommend: SST - Sweet Sixteen Tuba. If I was playing a contrabass tuba it would be a C tuba, not the 18 ft big brother.

I'll put one up for consideration WOTAM (waste of time and money). Correct me if I'm full of it but don't most schools supply people with horns if they need them? Why not have a semester of lessons and ganeral education about tubas before breaking the bank on a horn. Whatever the key. Unless, of course you've already got your own. Short story, I played a 24J all through high school and had packed it away as I had a scholarship to play football at a tiny school but fate had other ideas and my knee got trashed so faced with going to work at the steel mill with my friends or the Army I chose the latter. My band 392ndArmy Band at Ft lee only had 24J's so life went on but on the way home on leave;4 of us who lived in the northeast went in one car and the driver who was a great drummer was auditioning for the Ft Meyer Jazz band. While waiting for him I wandered into a room with a big rack of tubas. I started playing on one and a guy appeared next to me and it was our friend Bob Pallansch. He was very nice and asked why I wasn't playing on one of the C's to which I replied that I'd never played a C tuba and he said "You need to switch to C if you want to be a professional". the horn I was trying was a Cerveny 601 Bb and a year later I was in the West Point Band playing on that same model.Eight years later while working in New Orleans I took two weeks off and went up the east coast dropping horns off along the way for repair and he was my second stop to fix my 5/4 Bb Rudy. We had a chuckle about it. And were friends from then on. The letter of your horn only matters to other tuba players. If the teacher at the school you choose wants a C don't swim against the current. Get a C. You can always get a Bb down the road. Happy Gronking. Ed

The German language features some wonderful run-together words...
..."fahrvergnugen" and all that jazz...
...I was so hopeful...but no:

just (the all-too-obvious) C-Tuba für die Universität

There is no German acronym because it's an US thing

I attended Northern Illinois University as a Music Ed major in the late '70's. I had been lucky to purchase a used Mirafone 186 which I treasured and still play. My teacher, Robert Bauchens, played a Hirsbruner kaisertuba in BBb in the Chicago Lyric Opera, The Grant Park Symphony, and the Chicago Brass Quintet (!). Her told my that when he first came to Northwestern to study with Jake his horn had been stolen. When trying out possible replacements, he simply chose the instrument that played and sounded the best. I never had a problem with my horn, and played it in the NIU Philharmonic and various community orchestras as well. I have recently acquired a 60's era 5/4 Rudy in CC and I love it. Switching between BBb, EEb, and CC is my way of staving off Alzheimer's!

TAMF Translator and Amplifier of Mouth Farts
THICC Tall Heavy Instrument in CC

CCC = College CC

If financed then perhaps B.A.T.U.R.D = Big A$$ Tuba Undergraduate Related Debt

jtm wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 11:54 am Just happy to be hanging out with my small cheerful C tubas

Did Bob Ross come up with that one?

bloke wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 7:08 am

jtm wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 11:54 am Just happy to be hanging out with my small cheerful C tubas

Did Bob Ross come up with that one?

Almost. Those were the happy little Fs

jtm wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 9:42 amThose were the happy little Fs

What do smiling children have to do with tubas!?

WAQTAF

Rick "what's a quarter tone among friends?" Denney

Rick Denney wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:23 pm WAQTAF

Rick "what's a quarter tone among friends?" Denney

I must have gotten really lucky with my few C tubas. I have an F like that, though. If I slap WAQTAF on the for-sale listing, it'll be snatched up in no time.

YorkNumber3 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 12:32 pm ...The real badness is the recommendation of CC tuba purchase after the romancing of hs players that have no business being in music, performance or ed, just to fill a spot in a studio that probably should be much smaller in the first place.

I just listened to a tuba mother lament their child’s college crash and burn. Student was completely unprepared for the reality they faced. In the long run, it’s cruel to use these kids as fodder in this machine. That the real offense to me.

This was #1 on the list why I walked away from a major university teaching job after one year.
#2 (and no...it was NOT #1) was that I was losing a whole bunch of freelance work "back home" (I knew that when I took the teaching job, so no: not the #1 reason why I quit.)
I'm not going into reasons #3 nor #4...

There's a state - adjacent to my state - with a population of just under three million people. As far as I know, that entire state only hires one full-time tuba professor (an "associate" level professor) - with the others being "visiting", or "low brass" with competent/doubling tuba playing skills. To me, this seems sensible, and responsible to that state's taxpaying citizenry.

I think part of the "C for College" comes from the fact that a HS tubist owned no tuba in HS and used the school's whatever for four or five years. When the player decides to study tuba in college, the professor says "C! Hee, Hee! Buy from me! Whee!" So the first horn a student actually owns is a C.

Personally, if a student came to me as a prof and said "I wanna be a tuba major", I would point them to the football field where they would hand the player a sousie and then say, "Come back next year and tell me what you want to do."


That's my logic and i'm sticking to it.

I remember when there was a "network" of kolij teechin' peeps who were hooked up with a store (that apparently no longer exists).

One time, I remember (at one of the "international TUBA/ITEA thingies) seeing that store herding a whole bunch of it's "artistes" into a room for a private meeting. ...' didn't smell right...at least, not to me.

YorkNumber3 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 2:19 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 1:57 pm I remember when there was a "network" of kolij teechin' peeps who were hooked up with a store (that apparently no longer exists).

One time, I remember (at one of the "international TUBA/ITEA thingies) seeing that store herding a whole bunch of it's "artistes" into a room for a private meeting. ...' didn't smell right...at least, not to me.

I was offered a spiff deal repeatedly by a place. Maybe the same place?

I declined repeatedly, saying, “I’m always glad to recommend what I think would be a good fit to any student I meet.”

Either they ignored or didn’t get what was I was say as they always smiled big.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +purchases

When I was at Interlochen - one summer (picking up some applicable college credits, playing a ton) one person (my age) who lived near that store enjoyed mocking me for owning a Miraphone tuba. plus: "Who does this guy from 'the south' think he is? - etc. curiously: His local buddy owned an old 184, which he thought was wonderful. LOL...That guy (memories of funny $h!t triggered) would take his 184 into a phone booth, and blast out ffff low pitches in there.

Tangent alert . . .

Back in the early 90s, I worked for The Princeton Review as an MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test) tutor. I was told that, at that time, approximately 45-50,000 people took the MCAT each year, vying for the approximately 15,000 openings in U.S. medical schools each year. Not as competitive as the NFL draft, but clearly expectations did not conform with reality.

So I am curious: does anyone know the statistics of how many declared tuba performance majors there are each year, compared to the number of openings for tuba players in professional orchestras that occur each year? I 'm going to guess that it is considerably more competitive than the NFL draft. I'm asking about undergraduates, specifically. I assume anyone pursuing a D.M.A. in tuba is looking toward a career in academe.

Back to the topic of the thread: leaving aside those who just simply prefer CC (and there are clearly many), what is the number of CC buyers who think that that tuba will give them the edge to beat overwhelming odds?